This month’s open thread on climate topics. Please remember to be substantive, respectful and vaguely on topic.
Note that we’ll have an update to the various observational datasets after Jan 10th, and hopefully an update to all the model-observation comparisons the week following (depending on other things not getting in the way).
Happy New Year to you all! (Our 20th!).
Chen, on the previous UV: It is all you trolls here talk about, being nobody below is worth taking too seriously–:
Who said anything about taking us seriously? Just why are you here, then? I’m only here for the blog authors’ updates, and playing SIWOTI with the comments. If I thought I was being taken seriously, I’d up my game!
Piotr: In fact, to spur Mr. Chen into action, I will try to start the list of his faves for him:
On the “it’s a game” theme: OMG, man, what a round of whack-a-troll you’ve just launched! Everybody on Chen’s list, grab a mallet!
Folks, if Chen is distinct from the others on Piotr’s list, and is actually grieving a son, I offer my own sincere condolences. I’ll let up on him, and apologize if he or anyone else is hurt by my comments. Happy New Year, everyone, even to those suffering bereavement.
Mal: “ Folks, if Chen is distinct from the others on Piotr’s list ”
I doubt that. The same opinions, the same style, the same enemy list, the same mass productivity rate, the same anti-scientific and anti-Western ideology, and the same contemptuous generalizations about others coming from an anonymous author who supposedly …. have just arrived on RC.
If it walks like a Dharma and quacks like Dharma …
Dec 1 – the last post of “Dharma” on UV
Dec 13 – a “Philly” appears out of thin air on RC and debuts toward one of Dharmas opponents, Nigel : “ As if you care in the least. You do not”. No proof provided. He then defends doomism and tries to discredit Mann by insinuating that he sold his integrity for money. Again, no proof for those accusations provided. When “Philly”s insinuations about Mann are challenged – Philly … disappears after the mere 2 days on RC.
On Dec. 26 appears … “Chen” –
1. in his first post praises the Mann’s critic, Bendell,
2. next despite being on RC only for 11 minutes – he has already diagnosis of who I am as a person
3. picks up where Philly left off – by attacking …Nigel and Mann, praising Bendell, and demanding respect for doomers,
4. joins Don Williams in his attacks on climate science
5. when Don Williams blamed Putin’s invasion on Ukraine on the West, Chen had no problem with that, but he began lecturing on not bringing unrelated to climate topics ONLY AFTER Tomas Kalisz disagreed with the said Don Williams’ blaming the West for Putin’s actions.
6. when Secular Animist asks for a better moderation of the denier trolls – Chen despite being only 2 days on RC – replies with a sweeping generalization claiming that it is the opponents of the denier and doomer trolls, who are the real trolls.
7. defends Don Williams against Kevin’s critique
8. despite being only 2 days on RC produces the long list of people who according to him, do not deserve to be read (some of them did not even post during his 2 days on RC)
9. then he attacks RC, because, based on his extensive reading of this website over the last couple of days, he determined that the site is corrupt? cowardly?, because it does not promote discussion of “ the imperialist structure of the existing world economy” [boldface font as in Chen’s original]
Mal: If Chen […] is actually grieving a son ”
I’ll guess we will see – by whether his 2025 posts will be like his 31 Dec. one, or like all those that came before.
Piotr, when I read Chens 31 december post about her son, and all the other nice words of advice, it mostly sounded like it was written by a completely different person to our usual Chen. I suspected it was copied and pasted from somewhere so I did a search. Chens post from “As we stand at the threshold of a new year” onwards is largely copied from material written by Errole Gutierrez, on his mindfulness blog.
https://medium.com/@errolegutierrez/heres-to-2024-d7ab1a53fd7f
Of course its possible Chen is Errol, but I just doubt it. Errol looks about 30 from his photo. Chen must be in the 40s to have a 28 year old son, and Chen gave an age of 75 when using the Dharma or CJ handle. Maybe Errol is Chens son, but I doubt that as well. Surely you would highlight this if was his writings. Either way, its poor form to use other peoples words, and not reference the real author..
Piotr & Susan Anderson, I’m 95% sure Reality Check who posted on this website a couple of years ago is the same person as Chen, Dharma, Ned Kelly and others. This is because they all have the same sorts of views, raise the same issues, post the same sorts of links, and have the same writing and text formatting style. Please refer to the article ” Deciphering the ‘SPM AR6 WG1’ code ” from 2021. You can easily find several of Reality Checks comments on the first page and there are many. The similarity is striking. Refer:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/08/deciphering-the-spm-ar6-wg1-code/
Peter Kalmus (a climate scientist) may have also used the handle Reality Check, but that doesnt mean he’s the only person who uses that handle. It’s a common phrase. They may also share at lease some similar views.
FYI, I’m maintaining 2 BlueSky feeds
https://bsky.app/profile/pukite.com/feed/climate_cycles
https://bsky.app/profile/pukite.com/feed/peakoil
These feeds are more effective than what you would find in Twitter as the keyword filtering is well-designed
So 2023 and 2024 are behind us and it was two record breaking years. El Nina/La Nina (ENSO), ships with less pollution (sulphur) and that undersea volcano cant explain it? Can disappearing low hanging clouds ?
Where are we with this unexpected warmth?
Can’t tell what you are asking…
Which unexpected warmth? The tiny bit extra in 2023-4 over the already large expected amounts of warming over the past decades from CO2? Or are you trying to say most or all the warming to date is unexpected? If the former, people are working on it but it really is at the margins of the general trend at the moment. If the latter, well I guess we have a new troll.
Dean Myerson, last month: Am I a doomer? It is definitely not too late – technically. But the tools to do something are being destroyed step by step in front of our very eyes, and we seem unable to stop the destructive process, something we just got a huge chunk of proof of.
Well put. I’m not a doomer, simply because it’s never too late to leave the remaining fossil carbon in the ground. That puts the focus on the need to act collectively, at multiple scales, to solve the technical problem of anthropogenic global warming. As you say, the stable institutions of collective action are under assault in the short and medium terms. Here in the US, we just got a huge chunk of discouraging evidence. But it’s not proof of doom for most of the world including RC regulars. Speaking for myself, I’m not dead yet!
In the realm of reason, the arguments for collective intervention to decarbonize the global economy are stronger, in money and grief, every day we delay. Last year’s chunk of bad political news is quantitatively small: the popular vote was 49.9% for denial, but 48.4% for maintaining the Biden administration’s decarbonization initiative. And according to Yale’s Six Americas project, the proportion of Americans who are “alarmed” or “concerned” about climate change has been growing for over 10 years, becoming a majority (57%) in 2023.
Meanwhile, extreme weather keeps getting more extreme, with local records being exceeded annually. The last few years have evidently overcome the doubts of some previously “cautious” Americans. I, for one, find that perversely heartening, along with the knowledge that it’s only four years until the next Presidential election. Slim hope, perhaps, but sufficient to fend off certainty of doom. That’s essential for collective action to keep doom from being real!